


Witchcraft

by Serie11



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Gen, Memory Magic, Second Chances, Strained Friendships, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-23
Updated: 2019-07-23
Packaged: 2020-07-11 19:10:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19933078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Serie11/pseuds/Serie11
Summary: What Naminé’s powers mean for her, and for those connected to her





	Witchcraft

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aroberuka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aroberuka/gifts).



The first time she realises what she can do, she’s minutes away from drifting away into nothingness, not enough willpower to keep the scattered threads of her being together. She looks up and blinks what was supposed to be her final sight into view, and sees a man with red hair, one eyebrow lifted as he takes in the girl half shimmering out of existence.

“You’re not quite a Nobody, are you?” he asks.

She looks at him and thinks _this is Axel_ and she knows this because she knows Sora, and she knows the shell of Roxas, and she can reach through that to rifle through his memories, to pluck out the name that matches the face. She doesn’t know who Sora and Roxas and Axel are. All she knows is that Axel is standing above her, watching her die.

“Axel,” she murmurs, and his expression changes, eyes evaluating.

“Now how would you know that?” he asks lightly, words bouncing around her. She’s still slipping away, the edges of her self greying and fizzing.

“You know what’s left of Sora,” she tells him, because there isn’t any reason not to.

Axel surveys her with his electric green eyes, unnaturally bright. They’re out of place on his human face – then again, she’s beginning to realise that he isn’t exactly human. And that she might not be, either. “I know somewhere that you might be useful,” he tells her. “Do you want to live, or not?”

She clutches onto his offer, something that could be fear nipping at the back of her throat. “ _Yes._ ”

She wants to live.

* * *

She names herself, after Marluxia asks her what he should call her – Naminé. It means wave, and it sounds right for someone like her. She feels a sort of calm wash over her with the name, a claim that she’s laid on herself, a promise that only she knows about. A promise to live.

She’s not a Nobody; she isn’t Kairi. She can’t be, not when she knows that Kairi is out there, safe and alive and in her home world. She shouldn’t add the X to her name and create an anagram because that wouldn’t be right. She knows enough about Roxas to know that they’re very different. But a name with a similar meaning – yes. That suits her.

Marluxia is the first person to say her name, and he claims her powers and resolution for himself. Axel had offered a purpose, and he hadn’t specified what that purpose would be. She might hate him for that, as Marluxia asks her what she can feel, exactly, and what she can do. Her tongue trips out truths and she can’t even think of lying. The part of her that is Sora wants to trust these people who have helped her, who seem to think she is useful. The part that is Kairi has doubts, doubts about what Naminé knows when she stretches out and finds the strange world that Roxas is in. The part that only belongs to her, the part that’s squished in the middle of these feelings, is just trying to stay afloat. It hurts to think too much, so she tells Marluxia and Larxene and Axel about the grip she has over Sora, how she can touch his memories.

Larxene asks her if she can use her powers on the three of them, and she slowly shakes her head. Sora does not know any of them. She has Roxas’s memories of Axel, but her connection to Axel is tenuous at best. Larxene’s mouth splits into a wide smile, and Naminé wonders if all people have teeth that sharp.

“It’s perfect,” Larxene purrs, and Naminé tries not to shudder too obviously.

* * *

At first, she stumbles with Sora’s memories. It’s not like she’s done this before – she’s never done anything before, really. But for now Marluxia and Larxene seem willing to accommodate her, and Larxene is even sent to fetch her a box of crayons and a sketchpad when Naminé requests one. That makes altering Sora’s memories easier.

She carefully draws the scenes that she wants to erase, finding all the tiny details of them, everything that Sora can remember. She doesn’t know what taking out only half of the memory will do – will it hurt him? She doesn’t want to hurt him. So she captures every last inch on her paper, and cuts the corners off cleanly, separating scenes from other stains of memories.

The closest thing she can visualise it as is a chain. She is trying to cut one link out, and attach the two on either side together. Usually that means she has to cut open one of the other memories as well to accommodate the new link, smearing it slightly in Sora’s mind so that the edges can blur together messily. Scratchy, just like her drawings. 

When she’s finished with the memory she wants to remove, she carefully tears the paper out of her sketchpad, and rips it into neat squares, so tiny that even she can’t tell what it’s supposed to be. The confetti of colour is swept away, taken to the depths of the castle that they’re in. She doesn’t know what the castle will do with them, but at least Axel doesn’t burn the pages up. The pictures might be gone, but at least they’re not ash.

She remembers them, though.

* * *

The first memory she tries to insert fails terribly. Her page blackens and curls around itself, and she feels the link she had tried to add fall to pieces. Larxene yells at her, for that – Larxene does more than yell at her. Naminé’s arms hurt, bruises already forming in a patchwork, tears in the corners of her eyes as she tries again.

They’re very clear about what will happen if she can’t do what they want her to. She’s only as useful as she makes herself be. They want to control Sora, inserting new memories and extracting old ones with ease. That will put him under their control.

Naminé tries, but no matter what she does, new memories don’t stick. The floor of her room is covered in bits of ashy paper as attempt after attempt fails.

* * *

When she finally works it out, she trembles as she tells Marluxia – she can’t insert new memories, but she can overwrite old ones. It’s terrible. One step instead of two. No need to remove and add memories if you can just change the originals. Marluxia nods, and Larxene smiles her sharp smile again.

“Good job, witch.”

Naminé doesn’t know if Larxene says that with approval or not. It makes her knees shake – she desperately wants to avoid Larxene’s disapproval, but her approval doesn’t feel much better. If only she could avoid her.

Larxene’s eyes dig into her as she bends over her sketchbook, flipping to a new page. Naminé puts her crayon on the paper and dreams of someone to come and rescue her. Someone to come and take her away from this place, and finally show her somewhere green. Somewhere different from the white of these walls, the white of her dress, the white of her paper, reflecting her actions back at her with every stroke of her crayons. 

Carefully, she starts drawing Sora’s figure.

* * *

She trims and expands herself to fit into the places where Kairi should be, carefully layering the memories over the top. She only feels slightly bad about this – in a way, she is Kairi, and she’s so desperate for someone to truly care about her. Sora would be her friend, she’s sure. Especially if she makes him love her before they even meet.

Kairi is loud and brash and over the top, and Naminé replaces her with a quiet girl that likes to draw. It’s not quite a perfect fit, but she finds that she doesn’t really mind. In a way, she is Kairi, but she’s also not. If she fit too perfectly into the cookie cutter holes, she thinks that she might have begun to doubt that.

* * *

Sora asks her to replace all the memories that she ripped away from him, and she can only smile, that fake and sharp smile that she remembers from Larxene.

Larxene is dead. Sora at least accomplished that.

“Oh, okay. Nobody needs to keep a bunch of memories that aren’t real, right?” she asks. She doesn’t think that she’s ever been particularly happy, but this is a crushing blow to her already fragile state of being.

“No, not goodbye! When I wake up, I’ll find you. And then there will be no lies. We’re gonna be friends for real. Promise me, Naminé!” Sora reaches out, and they make a pinky promise, and Naminé thinks that maybe, maybe, she can accept this. If Sora doesn’t know who she is, and still wants to be friends… that would make it all worth it.

* * *

Sora sleeps, sleeps, inside the memory pod and Naminé keeps drawing. Pictures of him on the beach, pictures of him with Riku and Kairi. Pictures that she’d already drawn before, only to rip into shreds. Those memories have to be replaced now, carefully wedged in from where she’d ripped them out. By the end, Sora’s mind was a hole of inconsistencies and blank spaces, and Naminé devotes herself to trying to fix what she’s done.

She shades in colours and restores habits and forgotten past times with each stroke of her brush. But; not everything fits exactly where she thinks it should. And some memories, no matter how hard she tries, are beyond her reach.

She follows the trail of them to Roxas, and through him, to someone else. She shouldn’t have a connection to someone that Sora has never met – the only reason she has a connection to Roxas is because he used to _be_ Sora. But this new person – she isn’t sure. They are someone Sora doesn’t know, but they’re siphoning away Roxas’s memories almost as quickly as he can recover them. Naminé has to try and scoop up what she can, save what she can reach, but even then some memories trickle out of her grasp. There is something going on that is impacting Sora beyond her own work, and she doesn’t know who it is.

When she tells Riku, he is silent before he leaves. She hopes that he isn’t too harsh on the new person she had discovered.

* * *

Xion and Roxas perfectly fill the holes that she hadn’t been able to touch. Naminé hums as she works around them, work going almost too fast, chains linking back together of their own volition. Sora’s heart remembers what it means to be whole, even if the rest of Sora is having a bit of trouble recalling exactly how it used to be put together. And now that his heart is whole again, progress is astounding.

So astounding that it takes her less than a day to finish. She carefully trails her fingers along the pods that Donald and Goofy are resting in before pressing the button on the console that will open the them in several minutes. It’s enough time for her to be free of the mansion, at least. They won’t want to talk to her when they wake up. They won’t even remember her. She made sure to be especially careful to erase all hints of herself in their minds.

It won’t do any good to think about what could have been. She leaves the basement and goes to tell DiZ the news.

* * *

Riku is so tall and imposing in his new form. Naminé had never seen Ansem outside of Sora’s memories, but Riku’s appearance leaves no doubt to the matter. His new body does not belong to him. She doesn’t mention it – after all, sometimes she thinks that the body she’s in right now doesn’t belong to her, either. She’s a wisp of an afterthought, and she treasures each moment spent alive.

Together, the two of them track Sora’s progress through the worlds, giving him a helping hand every now and again when he needs it. Besides that, they watch for signs of the Organisation, and search for any hints that might help take them down. Naminé isn’t much of a help on this mission, but Riku refuses to let her leave his side. She appreciates that, even as she suspects that it’s out of some form of guilt. Or maybe he just wants to make sure that she isn’t captured again, and forced to use her memory powers on Sora once more. Whatever his reasoning, she takes the opportunity to see new worlds, fingers always itching to scratch landscapes down in her sketchbook.

She’d always thought that Sora would be the one to take her to see new worlds, but having Riku at her side is perhaps better. She even thinks that maybe, they might be friends.

* * *

Kairi isn’t what she had expected. She’d seen years and years of memories from Sora, memories where the two of them sat together in school, memories of summers on the beach. In person, Kairi is larger than Sora remembers, and more determined. There’s a streak of sadness in her that Naminé can’t help but notice, and she attributes it to the long year of loneliness. The rest of the population of her world had forgotten one of her best friends, and thought the other dead. To know that Riku was alive, and to have a hint of an idea that Sora existed – that would have separated her from the rest of her people.

Naminé knows something about loneliness. It’s easy, so easy, to reach out and hold Kairi’s hand and tell her that she need not be afraid. Even though they’re in a strange world, full of strange enemies, Riku is with her, and Naminé trusts him.

And when Naminé finally starts flickering too quickly too exist, she feels much more at peace than she had expected. Kairi’s expression is confused as Naminé takes her hand and steps into her – finally, finally whole.

Maybe now she can stop thinking about a beach she’s never seen, and an ache in her chest that she can’t fill.

* * *

Naminé dreams quietly, held close and safe in Kairi’s heart. She dreams of sunsets on beaches and races against her two best friends, about ice creams on clocktowers and the weight of a Keyblade in her hands.

But she’s also, tangentially aware of what is going on around Kairi, and she suspects that she needs to keep herself together to perform one, final act. So she pulls herself to the surface to open a dark corridor, and pulls Roxas to the surface as well. If anyone deserves some closure, it’s him. And maybe she doesn’t want to be by herself, the odd one out. She craves companionship, and this might be her last chance to feel it.

“I think I get it now,” Roxas says, and Naminé smiles at him. Both of them are a bit strange; Nobodies that existed while their original selves were still out there. But she can lull his memories slightly, and send him into a deep and calming sleep when he’s gone. She can still feel him inside Sora’s heart, but he shouldn’t bother Sora anymore. And he shouldn’t be bothered like she has been, with fleeting thoughts and painful memories.

She can’t give herself the same kindness. She supposes that’s what she deserves, for being a witch.

* * *

She’s aware of her surroundings, in a blurry way that reminds her of crayons put under the hot summer sun to melt and bleed. Not much use for drawing, then. She feels a bit like that, sometimes. Not much use for anything. Maybe this is just the next step of her strangeness. Not enough to exist on her own, but too much to properly fade back into Kairi’s hollows where she belongs.

Even so, when she finds herself in an endless sky, existing only as a sparkle of light, she’s surprised. It’s no bother to her, not being able to move. She’s been trapped motionless inside Kairi for a long time now. Is this just a further step downwards?

No. She cannot feel Kairi. And that’s… strange. She tries to reach out, tries to feel the connection she has to Sora, and the connections that Sora has to others.

Nothing.

She exists as her star and is sure that if she had a throat she’d be choking. What is this place? She’d been dreaming, so she’d missed whatever had happened with Kairi. The only reason that she can think, that she can’t feel Kairi or Sora, is that…

She widens her awareness slightly and finds other stars of light. Some have an internal brightness that she knows will sustain them for a long, long time. Others are faltering, winking out of view every few seconds, hanging on by the lasting flicking desires of their hearts.

She doesn’t know why she’s surprised when she sees Sora. He is not like the other stars – instead he’s half transparent, but still in possession of a body. If anyone was stubborn enough and lucky enough to cheat death, it would be him.

After they talk, Naminé centres herself and reaches out with her whole being, one last time, to a being almost as strange as her, someone that she’s touched before in another lifetime.

_… if you can hear me… it is time for action._

Sora is not the only one with the power to change things. This is why she is still here. With her powers… she can make a difference, for everybody. If she can do this one thing, to make up for all the pain, all the hurt that she’s caused the others – if she can _save_ them – then it will have all been worth it. She’ll be able to fade away from this place, her unfinished business complete.

She lets go.

* * *

When she opens her eyes, Riku is standing there.

She gasps, and that hurts her newly formed chest, air rushing in. Riku smiles at her hesitantly.

“Naminé? Can you hear me?”

She looks up at him, and thinks about a boy tossed to the side, and his mirror, overcoming the odds and striving until his best friend was free to stand beside him. She tries to reach out and touch him with her powers, but isn’t surprised when nothing happens.

This is a new, _real_ body. She’s been given another chance, but nothing happens without a price. And if she has to leave her witchcraft behind as payment – well, that’s an easy price to pay, in her opinion.


End file.
